Head Start: Reformy Approach Spreading To Early Childhood

I told you a few weeks ago about the potentially groundbreaking move on the part of HHS to bring new providers into Head Start and get some of the lowest performing programs out of the way. Here comes another form of competition -- a for-profit Head Start startup called Acelero that, while it hasn't actually made a profit yet, could shake things up in good ways or bad. The story describing the fledgling company (A for-profit approach to Head Start) comes from the Philadelphia Inquirer and Hechinger and sketches out both a handful of successes and some obvious challenges, along with lots of parallels between efforts to reform K-12 education and what's now being tried in ECE. Performance pay, a focus on outputs, venture philanthropy funders, cost-cutting, all the rest.

TrackBack URL for this entry:https://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00e54f8c25c9883401538eac34d3970b

Permalink URL for this entry:https://scholasticadministrator.typepad.com/thisweekineducation/2011/05/hechinger-report-a-for-profit-approach-to-head-start-turning-head-start-the-federal-childcare-program-for-low-in.html

You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

I believe this to be another example of businessmen and politicians utilizing our struggling education system for personal gain. Education policy should be developed by educators.